{"id":401,"date":"2016-11-24T16:50:03","date_gmt":"2016-11-24T16:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/?p=401"},"modified":"2016-11-24T22:41:59","modified_gmt":"2016-11-24T22:41:59","slug":"some-thoughts-on-failure-and-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/some-thoughts-on-failure-and-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Some thoughts on failure and learning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been talking a lot over the last year\u00a0about the importance of failure in learning, and how play can provide a context for that failure (summarized in this <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/the-importance-of-play-what-universities-can-learn-from-preschools-53007\" target=\"_blank\">Conversation piece<\/a>\u00a0and this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/higher-education-network\/2016\/sep\/01\/think-play-is-for-nurseries-not-universities-think-again\" target=\"_blank\">article in the Guardian<\/a> by Andy Walsh).<\/p>\n<p>I have been thinking about different types of failures for a workshop I&#8217;m running tomorrow, and considering what makes some failures more useful for learning than others. I&#8217;ve come up with an initial mapping of educational failure types based on two scales: how big the impact of the failure is, and how\u00a0much feedback is provided.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/failure.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-402\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-402 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/failure.png\" alt=\"failure\" width=\"502\" height=\"323\" srcset=\"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/failure.png 748w, https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/failure-300x193.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 502px) 100vw, 502px\" \/><\/a>In this model, a <strong>trivial fail<\/strong> is one with low impact and low feedback, such as forgetting to signal when driving a car (assuming you don&#8217;t cause a crash in the process) &#8211; it&#8217;s possible to make trivial fails and not notice. On the other end of the spectrum a <strong>serious fail<\/strong> has large consequences but also high feedback. For learning, I think that the most useful form of failure is the <strong>micro fail<\/strong> with low impact and high feedback &#8211; which provides opportunities to learn from the failure and practice in a safe environment. Opposite that is what I&#8217;m calling the <strong>critical fail<\/strong>, which has high impact but low feedback, such as, say, failing an A-level examination.<\/p>\n<p>How can\u00a0we create learning opportunities that are more about the micro-fail and less about the critical fail?<\/p>\n<p>These are just initial thoughts but I&#8217;m interested in any comments or feedback on this model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been talking a lot over the last year\u00a0about the importance of failure in learning, and how play can provide a context for that failure (summarized in this Conversation piece\u00a0and this article in the Guardian by Andy Walsh). I have&#8230;<br \/><a class=\"read-more-button\" href=\"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/some-thoughts-on-failure-and-learning\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[198],"class_list":["post-401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts","tag-failure"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p71sY0-6t","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":406,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions\/406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}